Interesting point of view here, which I feel I adopt in my refereeing, thoughts? Does anyone else?
A foul is a foul, or is it
This old chestnut – ‘if it is a foul outside the box, then it should be a foul inside the box’. I see it in the mailbox again today, and often hear it said by TV pundits.
It sounds completely reasonable, the rules are meant to be the same everywhere. However, in reality it has never actually been the case. And it really shouldn’t be. The problem is in a low scoring sport like football, major decisions like penalties decide matches. The bar for making those decisions should be higher. When officials make a result deciding decision, it should be clear cut. It’s not that the rules are different, but that the degree of certainty must be higher.
It’s like a judge sentencing somebody to a prison term or the death penalty. The rules for certainty of guilt may be the same, but the reality is if you are sending someone to the chair, you better have the murder weapon, eye-witnesses and DNA. The burden of proof has to be higher.
There is something deeply unsatisfying about a result being decided on a soft penalty. There was a perfect example in the Villa-Burnley game. Burnley with 10 men fight back to 2-2, minutes to go and hanging on against wave after wave of Villa attack. It is all great drama, but then the tiniest of flick on the bottom of a players boot. It was never enough to make the player go down but of course he decided to go down. Penalty awarded and match decided. It is such an anti-climax. All that drama, effort, commitment by the players, but ultimately decided by the softest of soft penalties. If a match is to be decided by a penalty decision, I want it to be a nailed on penalty.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/foo...E&cvid=33d7d69ee2734b9499d6555926849caa&ei=51
